Category Archives: Rants

In other news, Australia’s ongoing experiment with biological warfare doesn’t appear to be having any more success than it did with cane toads. “Killing dingoes has side effects” (and presumably not just for the dingoes) screams the Nature Research Highlights … Continue reading →

I know a lot of failed writers and editors—and pilots and athletes and actors and physicians. They’re all working in labs. Science! A long time ago, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. We had … Continue reading →

Ever have one of those evenings? In the midst of following the conversation about an event at the Royal Society tonight, in which Vince Cable, Sir Paul Nurse and other luminaries discuss the future of science in the UK* (twitter … Continue reading →

A long time ago, when the world was young, I did a research project towards my Biochemistry Part II exam. Three months in a lab, learning how to do cell culture, how not to kill myself with iodine-125, and making … Continue reading →

Here the UK we have an “e-petition” website, where you can get get a bunch of like-minded people to sign up to your latest crazy idea and if you can find another 99,999 crazies then the Government has said it … Continue reading →

One languid Sydney lunchtime I copied a particularly egregious paragraph from one of my co-authors and emailed it to my boss, with simply a ‘!’ for comment. A few minutes later his reply snuck sheepishly into my inbox, with the … Continue reading →

(Edited to add: just three seconds after hitting ‘publish’ I saw that Girl, Interrupting, has a very fine post making some of the same points. Please read that, too.) Towards the end of last year, the day job ran an … Continue reading →

If I might be permitted an observation, there is something wrong when, in a forum expressly for the purpose of bug reports and feedback, a user’s perfectly valid comments are dismissed out of hand. It’s bad enough when an unaffiliated … Continue reading →

(I speak for myself. Although I am employed by Faculty of 1000 (F1000) and this post is about the company, I am not writing on behalf of F1000: this is my opinion only.) Somewhere on the internets the other day … Continue reading →

At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.” Acts 26:24, NIV Theodore Zeldin is a philosopher. As far as I can work out, this means … Continue reading →